


bruno is orange

by Pidonyx



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Multi, POV Second Person, THE KILLJOYS ARE NOT MCR, Vague descriptions of violence, lovecore killjoys, so just keep that in mind going in, standard content warnings for the kjverse apply, vague emeto warning for later in it also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29444748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pidonyx/pseuds/Pidonyx
Summary: Your life turns upside down because of a kiss.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul/Party Poison (Danger Days)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	bruno is orange

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Love It If We Made It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27631259) by [costumejail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/costumejail/pseuds/costumejail). 



> so this is definitely divergent from my personal canon but i have not been able to get this idea out of my head so i wrote it really fast in like. less than three days and cleaned it up so i could post it on valentine’s day/for @hyperthrust’s lovecore killjoys event and here it is.
> 
> and yeah OKAY it’s still funpoison but it’s. different? i think. anyways
> 
> title is from bruno is orange by hop along and i’m sending a TON of love to my friend jordan/costumejail since this is vaguely inspired by a fic they wrote for me back in november (?) that i ADORE and read all the time (🥺🥰💕 ily!!) ty jordan ilysm

Your life turns upside down because of a kiss. You don’t know why you do it — you weren’t planning to, but on a golden afternoon after most of the other trainees have left for the day and gone back to their identical, white box-shaped apartments with families almost as cookie-cutter as the buildings themselves, you catch your classmate — one that you don’t even  _like_ _,_ for fuck’s sake, a guy who’s unnervingly silent and watches you with dark, blank eyes any time you walk into a room — by the wrist and clumsily press your mouth to his.

People kiss in the City — or at least you’re sure they must, even though you don’t have actual parents any more to prove that theory — but boys don’t kiss other boys. Even though you know that, and you still don’t know why you decided you even wanted to do this in the first place, you don’t move away, heart thumping dully in your chest, trying to imitate what you’ve seen on RomanceTV on the rare nights your mother unit lets you watch that channel. You aren’t very good at it, but your classmate drops his bag to the ground and changes the angle a little bit and that’s  _better_ _,_ even though it’s still dry and slightly awkward and when you pull back for breath you don’t know what to say.

Your classmate — Damien. First in your class and the most emotionally unresponsive person you’ve ever seen in the City, even with your little brother being on a dose twice what someone his age would normally take — licks his lips, slowly. The first spark of  _something_ you’ve ever seen from him flashes in his eyes and you think that maybe that wasn’t the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.

He catches you by surprise, kisses you again the next day, in the locker rooms hidden from the cameras by an open door and a strategically placed towel stolen from the showers, and it’s less than a week before you dump your pills down the sink in your apartment bathroom. They make it hard to feel anything, to touch and taste and hear and  _see_ things as they really are, and you want to be able to feel it completely when he has hands nervously clamped on the hem of your shirt and his mouth shakily pressed against yours. He whispers to you that he did the same thing, in a storage closet when you’re supposed to be eating lunch between morning and afternoon sessions. 

You’re thirteen years old and this is the first time you’ve felt  _everything_ since you were six. You ball your hands in the white trainee jacketDamien’s wearing and feel terrified and elated and angry and  _something_ _._ He finds your fingers in the dark and together you hold on.

*

Jamison notices. You could never have expected anything less, with how clever he is. There’s a reason why he’s already in his career track at only eleven; he picks up on things, finds patterns and makes his own private observations that come together to form a big picture like a giant mental jigsaw puzzle. It was just a matter of time. Still, when he confronts you in your room after curfew when both of you are already supposed to be asleep, you’re still trying to adjust to the technicolor rollercoaster of nausea and fear that ties your stomach in knots now over the fact that you could get caught.

Caught.  _Caught, caught, caught_ _,_ that sums up everything you’re afraid of these days, but you answer truthfully when he asks — demands to know — whether you’ve stopped your pills. You aren’t expecting him to sigh in relief and hook his fingers around each other and say  _me, too._

Three of you are in on the secret, then, when Damien starts to come crawling through your window at night, almost exactly an hour after lights-out. It scares the shit out of you the first time he does it, and he has to clap his hand over your mouth to keep you from making a noise.  _‘Lex, it’s me,_ he hisses, and as soon as your heartbeat is back to a normal pace, he burrows under the covers and curls up between you and the wall in a tight little ball.  _What happened?_ you ask.  _Parents fighting,_ he says back, toneless. It doesn’t sound like it used to, though, when he wasn’t doing it on purpose. This sounds more like he’s trying to keep himself calm. Make it seem like less of a big deal than it is.  _They changed my grandma’s dose, too,_ he adds in a whisper, and swipes his wrist over his eyes. You don’t know how to help, exactly, so you just hug him and hope that’s enough.

Damien has a little sister, you learn. You can hear the affection in his voice when he talks about her, when he promises to bring her somewhere you can meet her sometime; it’s the same burning, protective affection you have for your own little brother, and it makes you feel funny, that you have that in common. It’s not bad, though, just adds to the swirling, amorphous emotion in your gut you have yet to identify. Jamie doesn’t seem to care that the two of you are fraternizing, just that you don’t get found out, and soon enough, he makes a habit of sneaking into your room early in the morning, to make sure that Damien gets home before his family wakes up and notices him missing, or he gets arrested by a ‘Crow taking the dawn patrol. Jamie takes to Damien fast, and vice versa, and that makes you happy, in a way you can’t articulate yet. You just know that it makes your chest feel warm and tight when you see the pair of them, heads tucked close together, talking quietly about engineering and classes and the park that Damien’s sister Juliet likes to go to on the weekends, how maybe that could be a place you all could meet and talk to each other without anyone getting suspicious.

You all aren’t a  _something_ _,_ yet, but you’re close. An almost-something.

*

When you’ve been friends for three years — three  _long_ fucking years, sneaking around and trying not to get caught and living for the moments stolen in corners where no one can see you sigh and tilt your head back in invitation and hang on as long as you can to the feeling of another warm body pressed against yours — something changes again.

The clock ticks over to midnight and suddenly you’re sixteen, and right on cue the window that you’ve learned to keep open on instinct cracks open just a little more and Damien slips inside whispering  _Lexy, Lexy, happy birthday,_ pressing something into your hand. It crinkles when you wrap your fingers around it and it only takes a few seconds of squinting in the dim light of the streetlamp outside to make out the package of candy in your palm. Damien grins at you, then, a wide flash of white in the dark, says  _got it from a Juvee, d’you like it_ and you think  _oh._

You’re in love. That’s what this feeling is, the same one you’ve had described to you by Damien’s grandmother and old contraband novellas that you can still get if you know who in the Lobby to talk to. It should terrify you — you’re too young to be paired up with anyone yet, and even if you weren’t it isn’t ever about  _love_ _,_ it’s about compatibility and making sure the population doesn’t decrease and you wouldn’t be allowed to love him anyways. The emotion is as good as illegal in everything except for law. And especially between two people that the City would consider male. Even so, your heart squeezes, and before you think about it you’re blurting three words that you’ve never heard anyone say to each other out loud before, and Damien freezes. He blinks at you, falling silent, and you just have time to think  _oh no._ But before you can stutter some kind of apology, he curls into you, breath warm against your throat, and says it back. 

He kisses you in the dark and it doesn’t matter if you’re breaking the law, he’s worth it, you’re in love. He leaves in the morning, sweet sugar still melting on both of your tongues, but he says  _happy birthday_ again and kisses you breathless before he goes, and it leaves your toes and fingers tingling.

He catches your eye again during combat training and it’s all you can do to keep yourself from blushing, to keep your expression passive. It would be a death sentence if you didn’t, but it’s hard to remember that when you can see past the facade he wears now during the day to where something soft and privately yours is still just visible in the way he looks at you. You tighten your grip on the raygun in your hands, almost expecting the crinkle and give of colored cellophane instead of hard white plastic, and try to block out those thoughts, refocusing on the human-shaped target you’re supposed to be aiming at.

*

You’re seventeen years old, and at this point you’re used to Damien pressing his mouth to yours as soon as he slips in through the side window. Usually, it’s slow and warm, he’ll murmur  _hi, sunshine_ or smile as he kisses you. Tonight, though, it’s hard and fast and desperate immediately. And maybe you melt into it, the still-novel feeling of being wanted and the hungry pressure pinning you to the mattress. Still, something feels off, so after only a few moments, you press gently on his shoulder, whisper  _are you okay?_ and don’t let him brush it off with just a shake of his head, holding firm even when he says, voice raw in the darkness,  _please, I can’t, please just let me —_

_Tell me,_ you say softly, and that’s when he crumples against your chest and chokes on a sound you’ll never forget, even years later.

_They’re gone._ His voice is hollow, your blood runs cold —  _she’s_ gone, _‘Lex. I — car accident. Julie didn’t — my grandma — they showed me_ pictures. _There was so much_ blood.

There isn’t anything to say. You can feel the shake in his fingers when he clings to your sleeve, hear the anguish in his voice even as he tries to keep quiet — there’s no space for mourning, even for this. You wrap him tight in your blanket and hide your face in the moisture seeping through the pilling fabric and that’s when you realize, unshakably certain,  _I have to get him out of here._

Maybe Jamie was on to something when he said you two just  _get_ each other, because as soon as he’s entirely cried out, Damien ghosts chapped lips next to your ear and rasps,  _I can’t stay here anymore._

And then  _Come with me._

You can’t imagine ever telling him no.

*

The two of you skip classes the next day. It’s reckless as hell, especially with all the secrets you have tucked in the back of your throat already, but his hand is laced firmly with yours beneath the folds of your coats as you dart through the narrow alleys of the Lobby, his lips fleetingly burning a heart-shaped print behind your ear, so you just close your eyes and pray to the gods of the desert, so close and yet so far behind the tall concrete monolith of the City wall, that you survive this. Fuck, just get  _them_ out safe, that’s all you care about. 

You have a whole book of excuses readied at the tip of your tongue, if you have to use them. If you have to shove Jamie’s hand into Damien’s the way yours is now and scream  _go, take care of each other_ in order to make that happen. You haven’t told either of them, the sacrifice you’re willing and prepared to make; they would try to stop you. And at this point you’re half  _expecting_ that you won’t make it, so you seal your lips shut and take scared, joyful, adrenaline-fueled kisses where you can get them, white-painted brick walls scraping your back through your clothes.

_Our whole lives ahead of us_ he whispers, hushed and breathless. Your whole life in some chalk-pale City cell block somewhere, his out in the colorful sands and sunsets and air that scratches your lungs when you breathe it.  _That’s right_ _,_ you lie.  _I love you,_ you add truthfully. He mouths the words back, foreheads pressed together, and then you’re tugging each other along again, with no real idea where you’re going and nothing but desperation and hope to back you up.

You weave down another identical, dingy alleyway of shut-off neon signs and wind-carried paper, and someone calls out to you. Fear freezes your stomach and spills bile into your mouth. You keep your palm clamped around his and, slowly, turn just enough that whoever it is won’t be able to see your face. Excuses on the tip of your tongue.

The voice calls again, _hey, kids, c’mon,_ and it sends you staggering when you realize it’s just a Juvee Hall, tall and older than most of the few rebels you’re aware of. They don’t look unkind, either, the slant of their mouth pinched with years of stress but gentle in the places it counts. Their eyes are cautiously concerned, grey wool overcoat folded over a flash of deep blue you just manage to catch before it disappears again. You’re still reeling with relief, mouth too dry to produce words, but Damien’s isn’t, his hand steadying and warm against the fall chill when he squeezes your palm, and this is how you get the first puzzle piece of your escape.

Three people, three kids, out of the City, that’s all you need, he tells them.  _We need help. Can you get us out?_ Out of sheer luck, they can. They know how and where to leave. They know how to survive in the desert. They look at you for a long moment, eyeing your white knuckles and drawn appearance — you haven’t been eating much. You’re too nervous to —  _No payment,_ they say.  _ Just remember me for a favor. _

_Done,_ Damien replies, and you don’t think anyone but you would be able to hear the shake of relief in his voice. And now, before you can even breathe again, you have a plan. An out. You’re coming back in a week, bringing Jamie and anything you think you’ll need to leave and the Juvee will provide the rest. Your head feels light. At the same time, your stomach feels impossibly heavy, like you’ve swallowed a pack of the ball bearings the infirmary at the Program keeps in storage,  _just in case_ _._ It can’t be that easy.

Damien pulls you into a vacant niche. He hides his face in your shoulder and you can feel the tiny tilt of his mouth in the hollow of your throat and all you can think is  _if I have to lose you, I’m going to save you._ He hasn’t really smiled since his sister died. You want him to smile again, and the City is no place for that. You’re young, but you don’t feel it — right now, you feel the ache of wanting and not believing like creeping arthritis, making your bones brittle against your rattling lungs.  _Save him,_ you beg the clear grey sky. His palm is scorching a handprint into the skin over your heart. It hurts, and just for a moment, you long for the soothing numb of the pills, glazing your insides in frosted silver static.

*

You’re cautious and wild in waves, as the week passes. At times, the icy clutch of fear swallows you in a tide of  _make it last, play it safe, for fuck’s sake don’t get him caught_ _,_ and you shy away from his hands, go through the motions in the cold, desperate hope that you’ll both last the week. At others, you’re so certain that you’ll be staying behind that you’re choked with the need to get everything you can before he’s gone and you’re bleached clean, hitching his legs around your waist in the locker room shower stalls, wandering hands and panting breaths in a staccato cacophony around your ears accompanying the irregular slosh of your heartbeat.  _I love you,_ you repeat recklessly in these moments.  _I love you, I love you, I love you._ Don’t forget me, you beg without words. Find someone else if you have to, slot someone else into my place, but please, god, keep a little bit of your heart for me.

The night before you’re set to leave, you ask, voice trembling and uneven.  _ Please.  Please, I want it to be you_ _._ He stills your shaking, creeping hands with gentle palms and presses his face into the side of your neck, instead. He breathes you in like you’re oxygen, asks  _what do you really want_ and holds you when your voice breaks and you croak  _ I want to have something to remember. _

_Not leaving you behind_ _,_ he says firmly. His voice is so warm, he sounds like everything. How did you live without him, before? How are you going to live when he’s gone?  _Not_ leaving _you, sunshine._ He says it like he’s sure.  _ We all get out or none of us do. _

_No,_ you sob.  _Yes,_ he says softly, and he kisses you like it’s the end of the world. If you close your eyes, it’s like he’s everywhere.

*

You leave Battery City at just shy of eighteen years old, with your little brother shivering in the cold — too thin, ill with a sudden fever — and your  _boyfriend_ — a word you finally get to use — pale as a ghost and icy calm, your own nerves shot to hell and back, crawling up and down your spine with prickling frostbitten needles until you have to actually stumble to a dumpster and empty the little contents of your stomach into the stinking metal. The entire time, you’re thinking  _this is it_ _,_ that any second the Scarecrows you abandoned are going to come around the corner and shoot you dead with a screaming bolt through the skull.

Exxies do show up, in the end, but muscle memory that you never wanted kicks in and saves your lives, you and Damien and the Juvee Hall firing in unison until you have your first real, actual kills under your belt and you’re tripping over your feet and out into the night-stained sands that mark the beginning of Zone 1. It slips under your feet in a way you weren’t expecting, and you almost fall except for Damien catching you under the arm and tucking you in close against his side.

_Easy, sunshine,_ he says, softly.  _We made it, baby. Do you see it? D’you see the stars?_

You do. Bigger and brighter and wider than you ever thought possible, the world is stretching out around you. Your knees buckle, nearly sending both of you to the ground, but he catches you again, easing you down so you’re sitting in the coarse sand and he’s cradling your head against his chest.  _We made it, ‘Lex. We made it. See? Wasn’t that hard._

He doesn’t shush you when you start to cry, just brushes open-mouthed kisses over your sweat-streaked forehead, repeating it over and over, even when his own voice cracks and he trembles sporadically like earthquake aftershocks where he’s holding you close. On the other side, Jamie plasters himself up against your back, and says  _fuck_ like it’s being ripped out of him repeatedly, less like a curse and more like a prayer.

The desert is wide around you like a scoop carved from the earth by a giant’s spoon, big enough to swallow you up and hide you from the world, and thank fuck. Thank god for that.

*

These days, you’re running as a crew. You, and Kobra Kid and Fun Ghoul and Jet Star. You liked Jet instantly, the moment he rolled up to the radio station with his family’s caravan of motorbabies and said  _fuck, you guys look like hell,_ and the newly-minted Kobra Kid had drawled  _thanks, we just got back_ _._ And Ghoul — you’d been trying out new nicknames, keeping a list of all the ones he liked, like  _Ghoulie_ and  _baby_ and  _sweetheart_ and  _angel_ — breathed a laugh right in your ear, all loose and jittery from the freedom of not having to hide it, and teased  _do I need t’ be jealous?_ and kissed your cheek right there in front of everyone.

It still takes your breath away. You open your eyes in the morning and he’s still there. His hair is long, now, fanning across the pillow in a raven paint-spill. He hasn’t dyed it, not like yours, but he doesn’t need to. It’s so different from what he had in the City; though maybe that’s just because he  _glows,_ now. He’s tanned from the sun and covered in fresh ink of whatever suits his fancy, and he’s  _happy_ _._ He looks more  _him_ than he ever has before, pretty face now complemented by all the color he’s surrounded himself with, disarming smile matched with the vibrancy of the Zones. He says that you look more  _you_ now, too.

When he tugs gently on the strands of bright red that fall in your face now, and laughs like he’s just happy to be with you, you think that you couldn’t possibly be more in love.

“G’morning, sugar,” you say, when he finally scrunches his face up and squints his eyes open against the bright,  _real_ sunlight beaming in through the dusty Diner window above the mattress the two of you share, in a grimy abandoned back office that you think finally feels like  _home._

He smiles back at you, reaching out to sweep your bangs away from your eyes. “Morning, Pois. Any plans for th’ day?”

“Jus’ bein’ with you,” you answer, and grin when the line makes Ghoul laugh.

“Yeah?” he says, propping himself up on an arm so his hair encloses the two of you in a silky curtain. It smells like oranges, a scent that has to come from some kind of shampoo or something, but you’ve never been able to tell and you don’t want to ask. As far as you’re concerned, that’s just him. The tip of his nose is chilly when it brushes against yours. “‘S kinda perfect, I might’ve been thinking the same thing.”

You sigh when he kisses you, lips warm and pliant, heartbeat steady under the palm you slide against his ribcage. “‘S the catch,” you breathe against his mouth, biting gently at the lower half of the smile you can feel on your skin like barely-there sunburn. “‘S always perfect when it’s with you.”

“I love you.” You catch the words in your mouth, syrupy like honey on the tongue, and swallow so they stick in your throat like melting candy, like the sweets he bought for you on your birthday, eaten in secret beneath a fortress of blankets in the dead of night.

“And I love  _you_ _,_ starlight.” You keep your lips pressed to the faint freckles under his eye, tracing your fingers down to where  _Forever and Always_ is in curling, delicate script above the letters of your own name. “My Ghoulie.”

“Yours,” he repeats, softly. “Yours.”


End file.
